Nobody moved. Not one person.
“She said, Tom, I need you to wash your hands and get every towel in the house. Then I need you to put the phone down on the floor by Connie’s head and tell me what you see.”
His voice caught. He waited for it.
“Forty minutes. The cord was around the baby’s neck. Shirley told me to slip one finger under it and lift it over, slow, like taking a necklace off somebody. I did it. And Amy cried.”
He looked straight at Kyle.
“Amy’s twenty-eight now. She teaches second grade in Odell. I have never once been able to pay that back. Not once. And you had the woman standing in the sun because you didn’t like the look of a piece of paper.”
Kyle Brandt was crying openly now. He didn’t try to hide it. He just stood there and let it run down his sunburned face.
